


Unforgettable

by conceptstage



Series: Multi-Chapter Critical Role [8]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Beau took the hag's deal au, F/F, Temporary Character Death, creative liberties taken with how magic works in Exandria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: There's something... familiar about this girl. Jester can't put her fingers on how she knows her or even if she knows her at all but there's a tingle in the back of her mind. It's a mystery and Jester is determined to get to the bottom of it.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: Multi-Chapter Critical Role [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436665
Comments: 24
Kudos: 245





	1. Chapter 1

Jester loved people watching. Ever since the Mighty Nein had disbanded and gone about their separate ways, she’d been having a hard time filling her time back at the Chateau.

Fjord had gone with Caduceus back to the Grove, Yasha stayed in Nicodranus but Jester wasn’t sure where she was living, Veth and her family had bought an apartment in town but Jester didn’t get to see her as often as she liked while they worked on opening their new store, and Caleb had bought a little town home near Yussah’s tower and he was often going back and forth between researching magic with Yussah and hanging out with Essek in Rosohna. And Jester had gone home to her Momma. Alone. Again.

From her window she could see the morning market, shopkeepers setting up their little stalls for the day and people doing some shopping before the rush of the day started. The sun was hardly up, lighting the sky and the ocean up pink and purple but the streets down below were still pretty dark. 

The crepe vendor set up right below her window as usual and she thought about making paper flowers to drop down on his head but paused when someone stepped up. She looked… not familiar exactly. Jester didn’t know her name and looking at her she didn’t remember ever meeting her but there was a bit of buzzing in the back of her mind that made her wonder who this person was.

She was about Jester’s age, early twenties, with dark brown hair in an undercut and braid and tied off in a top knot. Her clothes sat loose on her and she had a staff strapped to her back.

“Morning Marty,” the woman said, holding up a few copper. “The usual please.”

Marty the crepe guy frowned. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

She smiled a little lopsided grin and sat the coins down. “Just a crepe please.”

Marty nodded and turned away, pulling one up and wrapping it in paper, then he paused when he saw her standing there. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. Welcome to Marty’s, can I help you?”

Jester frowned and tilted her head. She had already ordered why was he acting like she’d appeared out of nowhere? But the woman nodded patiently and pointed to the coins on the stall. “Yeah, here are my coins, that for me?”

He looked at the crepe in his hands and handed it over. “It is now. Have a great day.” Marty picked up the coins and turned away to drop the coins in the chest at his side and when he turned back, he frowned. “Hey did you pay for that?”

The girl turned to walk away. “Yep,” she said, taking a bite.

“Hey! Hey, get back here and pay for that” He started looking around for a guard, then blinked and smiled at a passing woman. “Morning,” he said, like he didn’t remember anything that had just happened.

Jester frowned. Why was Marty acting so odd? She watched the girl disappear down the alley eating her crepe like nothing weird had happened. Jester looked back over her shoulder when she heard her mother’s voice at the door to their suite, probably ordering breakfast. When she looked back, she couldn’t remember what she’d been doing just a moment ago. She went back to just watching the market, wondering if she’d see anything interesting today.

The next morning she yawned as she shuffled to the window and pushed it open, blinking into the morning light dancing over the city to look out as the market got set up just like usual. She thought she’d get bored of it eventually, as she did with most things, but so far it was an interesting way to start a morning. She spent a few moments putting in her horn jewelry, then looked up when there was a flash of brown hair below that caught her attention. Something tickled the back of her mind and she frowned, narrowing her eyes at the woman walking towards Marty’s stall. There was… something about her but when Jester tried to reach for whatever memory or deja vu was trying to get her attention it slipped through her fingers.

The girl sat two copper on Marty’s stall and yawned. “Morning, Marty. Just a crepe.”

Marty nodded. “Morning, stranger. Long night?”

The young woman shrugged. “Just a bad night’s sleep.”

Marty was humming happily as he turned away to get her crepe ready, then blinked in surprise when he turned back to her. “Oh, hello. Morning.”

The woman glanced up at the window and seemed startled when she met Jester’s eyes. She stared for a moment then gave her a sad little smile. Jester smiled back and waved but she didn’t recognize this woman at all. When the woman seemed to realize that Jester didn’t know her, she sighed and used one finger to push both coins towards Marty across the little wooden counter. “I’m not in the mood to do this today, Marty. Here’s my money, can I just have that fucking crepe?”

Marty frowned at her but handed it over and took the coins. “Well, alright. Have a nice day.” She started eating as she walked away, glancing back up Jester and then turning sharply away. Marty watched her walk away with his eyebrows furrowed. “What a rude young lady.”

Jester frowned curiously as she watched the exchange. Gears started turning in her mind. Marty had forgotten her. Somehow, by some kind of magic or something, Marty had forgotten her when he looked away. Had Jester ever forgotten her? Had Jester seen that woman’s face before? Had she spoken to her? Is that why she was sad? Jester leaned as far out of her window as she dared and watched the woman as she walked up the alley market towards the main road. She greeted each and every vendor by name and a tired wave and everyone who saw her looked confused by her familiarity but greeted her pleasantly as they tried to place her face in their memory. Jester was determined not to look away. If she looked away, maybe she would forget like Marty had. She leaned and leaned, refusing to lose sight of her. Her bedroom door opened and she heard her mother step in but she didn’t look back.

The forgettable woman stepped out of the alley and into the sunlight and her dark skin glowed in the pink-purple sun rise. 

“Jester, darling, do you- my word! Why are you leaning out your window, you could fall!” Marion rushed over and grabbed her by the waist to tug her back through the open window. “Darling, what were you doing?”

Jester frowned and blinked at her in confusion. “I… I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Marion sighed and sat her hand on her own chest to calm her furiously beating heart. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, my love. Please do be more careful. Breakfast is here at the table, I made sure they brought you extra waffles after your rough night.”

Jester nodded and shut the window, a little disappointed that she was having to cut her people watching off early. She hadn’t even seen anything interesting yet today. “I’ll get dressed and meet you at the table.”

Jester was prepared today. Something weird was going on in the market, she didn’t know what it was, she just knew. She left the chateau before the sun had even risen at all and she picked a spot across the alley from her window and sat and waited. 

She was a determined young woman and if something weird was going on she was going to get to the bottom of it. She sat there in the alley until the stalls started to fill up once more. A few people gave her funny looks but no one spoke to her, except for the older woman who ran the jewelry stall on Jester’s left who offered her a shall to keep her warm, which she politely turned away.

Jester got kind of lost in her people watching, watching a kind old half orc struggle to lift his granddaughter up on his shoulders, then smiling gleefully when he managed it, and watching the quiet black cat wait for the perfect moment to snatch a sardine off the fish stall without being chased away. Her eyes caught on a young woman, about her own age with brown hair in an undercut and braided back into a top knot. She was pretty, with brown skin covered in pink-white scars and hard, defined abs on full display in her crop top. She was standing near the end of the alleyway staring up at Jester’s window with a frown on her face. Jester felt her curiosity piqued. This person was watching her window, was she dangerous? Maybe this was the cause of the weirdness Jester had been feeling all week, maybe she had been feeling this person watching her. The woman watched for another minute then sighed and shook her head and started walking towards Marty’s crepe stall, walking right passed Jester without seeing her.

She stepped up to Marty’s and sat two copper cons on the counter. “Morning. Can I get a crepe please?”

Marty gave her a kind smile with no recognition in his eyes. “Certainly. One moment.” He turned away from her and started making the crepe and Jester watched the woman glance back up towards her window while she waited, tilting her head when no one appeared. Jester stood up but didn’t move towards her just yet, just watched. Marty turned back and smiled at the woman. “Morning! What can I get you?”

The woman sighed and Jester frowned. She didn’t know Marty at all besides his name and that he did not like having paper flowers rained down on him from above, but she had never seen him so forgetful in all the months she’d been people watching the market from her window. “Just a crepe, please.”

Marty looked at the one in his hand in surprise. “Ah, here’s a fresh one! Enjoy.”

The woman took it and started to walk away. “Thanks, Marty.”

Marty blinked. “Do I know you?”

The woman didn’t answer, but she did turn around a few feet away from the stall and looked at Jester’s window again. Jester started to follow her down the alley. “Hey!” she called.

The woman looked at her and her eyes widened when they met Jester’s. She coughed on her mouthful of food and hit her own chest to dislodge it. “Jester!” She cleared her throat as Jester approached her and avoided Jester’s eyes. “Fuck, I- I mean, hi, nice to meet you. Bye.” She turned and started walking quickly to the other end of the alley but Jester followed her, having to jog to keep up with her long strides. 

“Wait! Wait wait wait! Why do you know my name?”

“I don’t know your name!”

“You just said it!”

“I just said… fester… I have an infection that I should get looked at, bye.”

“Why do I remember you?”

The woman turned sharply and looked at Jester with wide eyes. “You… You remember me?”

Jester came to a stop in front of her, feeling a little out of breath. “I… I mean, not really. Sort of. I don’t know who you are but I saw you and I felt… like a little tingle in my brain. Like I knew you but I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

The hope in the woman’s face deflated instantly and she looked away. “I… You’ll forget me soon. I won’t come back this way, you don’t have to worry about… I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? Why do I see you when I close my eyes, why… why do you… Just why?”

The woman sighed. “Jes, I can’t explain this to you again. It will fucking kill me. I shouldn’t have come back, I’m sorry. Just look away and you’ll forget all about me.”

Jester frowned and stepped closer. “I don’t want to forget. Why can’t I remember you?”

The woman bit her lip and shook her head. She looked around to see if anyone was looking their way but it seemed like no one could remember seeing this conversation long enough to feel concerned by it. “I traded my future to help a friend. I thought… I thought she’d just exile me or something but she got creative.”

“So no one can remember you at all?”

“Not… Not active memories. People can sometimes get deja vu about me or, like, an instinct about me. But people can’t remember my face or my name.” She cleared her throat and stepped out of someone’s way, moving towards the wall of the chateau with Jester following her closely. “Kids can remember me, for some goddamn reason. I don’t fucking know why but it doesn’t affect them.”

“How long have you been this way?” Jester asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

The woman shrugged. “About a year. A little less.”

“And… And when did we meet? The first time?”

She glanced up at her face from under her eye lashes and didn’t look like she wanted to answer. “Look, don’t worry about me. I’m not- I’m not important. I’m fine.”

Jester stared at her, reluctant even to blink, terrified that she’d forget her face, forget what she’d been told. “Will you tell me your name at least?”

The woman licked her bottom lip and there was pain in her eyes. Jester wasn’t sure if she’d caused it but she hated it either way. “Beau. My name is Beau.’

“Beau…” The name felt weighty and familiar on her tongue, like the words to an old favorite song or a sweet cake you only got to have on special occasions. “I’ll remember it. I promise.”

Beau gave her a sad smile and shook her head. “You won’t. But it’s alright, Jes. Just forget about me. I’ll be fine.” She started to turn away but Jester reached out and grabbed her by the sides of her face.

“Hold on. Let me look longer, I’ll memorize it and when you come tomorrow I’ll see you and I’ll remember, I promise.”

Beau reached up and gently put her hand on Jester’s elbow to move her hand away. “Jes… Last time we talked like this, you stared at me for two hours straight and the next day I came to see you at the chateau and you still didn’t remember me. That’s when I realized this was hopeless and I... I wasn't going to come back. This magic is more stubborn than you.”

“That’s not possible. I am the most stubborn.”

Beau laughed like she had nothing left inside her. “I know. But trust me, this shit wins out every time.”

Jester let her hand be pulled away. “But don’t you get so very lonely?”

Beau shook her head. “I’m fine. I’m better alone anyway.”

“But-”

“Jes… please.” She stepped away from Jester and started back towards the end of the alley but this time Jester didn’t follow her. 

She stared at her back and started whispering her name under her breath. If she kept saying it, she couldn't forget it, could she? She whispered it for about three seconds after Beau disappeared around the corner and, slowly, the whispers of ‘Beau, Beau, Beau, Beau…’ morphed into a wordless hum. She grinned and looked around the bustling alley, wondering what she’d come down here for. She bought a crepe and walked back into the chateau, humming the same song under her breath as she skipped.

Jester hummed and turned her mother’s face cream around in her hand. “Something weird is going on,” she said, sitting the jar down and spinning it on the wooden counter.

Veth looked up from her counting and moved over all the coins that she’d counted so far so that she didn’t get lost. “What, with the cream? Every batch is gonna be a little bit different, but it’ll still work the same.”

“No, there's…” She groaned. “Okay, alright, so, every morning I do some people watching outside my window before breakfast. There’s that market there, remember?” She waited until Veth nodded. “Well, something weird is going on out there every morning and I don’t really know what it is.”

“Then how do you know it’s weird? Luc, put that down- Hold on.” She hopped off the step stool behind the counter and hurried over to Luc to take a glass jar from his grabbing hands. “Do your homework then you can go hang out with your Papa.” She walked back to the counter. “Alright, sorry, what was that?”

Jester sighed. “There’s these… gaps. In my memory. I open the window, I watch for a while, and then I… zone out or something and I don’t remember this gap of, like, a few minutes.”

Veth frowned and gave Jester her full attention. “Are you sure you’re not just tired?”

“Well, I thought so, but then this morning I went through sketches that I had drawn a few mornings ago and I saw something super weird.” She sat her sketchbook on the counter open to a page covered in small, simple sketches. “I practice faces by drawing random people. I don’t really know all these people but I remember drawing them but this-” She pointed to a rough, half finished sketch of a young woman with kind eyes and a lopsided smile. “I didn’t finish this one, that’s not super weird I don’t finish all of them, but I don’t remember starting it. I don’t remember this girl. And then-” She flipped the page and showed another page similar to the last with several rough face sketches dotted over the page. The young woman showed up here again, more detailed this time, though she was frowning. She flipped again and the girl sort of appeared again but it was just her jaw line and brow bone and the silhouette of her nose. “And then, I went to the very very beginning of my book to see how often she appeared and I found this one from almost two years ago.” Jester flipped to the front of the book and searched for a page for a moment, then held it up for Veth to see. The left page was just a very detailed drawing of the young woman that took up the entire paper. There was even some color, brown on her cheeks and blue on her eyes. She looked happy here. There was glee in her eyes and a wide grin on her mouth and her hair down over her shoulder in dark waves. “This looks like the kind of drawings I do when I have a willing model. She sat for this. And it’s not the only one. I have no memory of this person at all. I think someone, maybe this girl, I think someone is fucking with my memory.”

“Two years ago? But we were-”

“The Mighty Nein, yeah. I don't really know where we were exactly when this was drawn but it for sure for sure wasn't Nicodranus. This was near the beginning, even before Molly died. Did I meet her and then she followed us here? Why don’t I remember drawing this? How come I have so many drawings of her face but when I close my eyes I can’t even picture it.”

Veth frowned and looked the drawing over. “That’s fucked up. Do you think- Luc, don’t put that in your mouth! Hold on….” She hopped off the stool again and rushed around the counter.

Jester sighed and looked down at the drawing. She ran her finger over the line of her brow and wondered what it was that had made her laugh. Had Jester made her laugh? She hoped so.

She didn’t know why she couldn’t remember this person, but she was clearly coming to the market outside her window every morning. She could figure this out.

Veth pulled Luc over to the counter and helped him up into the chair at Jester’s side. She gave him a wide smile. “Hey, Lukie! Having a good day here with your Momma?”

Luc grinned, a smearing of some kind of gel over his forehead while his mother searched for a wet cloth in the back room. His eyes caught the drawing that Jester was open to and grinned. “Aunt Beau!” he cheered, pointing at the sketch. “She gave me a sucker yesterday. I ate it already but I’ll save you some next time.”

Jester gasped and held the book towards him. “You know this person?”

“Yeah, that’s Aunt Beau. Momma says I made her up but she comes to see us every day.”

“Comes to see you… She comes here?”

“Yeah, every day. Then she and Momma play a game where they pretend they don’t know each other. Sometimes she gives me a sucker. Sometimes she gives me money and tells me to treat myself and I buy ice cream with it.”

“When does she come here?”

“Right before Momma locks the door.”

“And what’s her name? You called her-”

The bell above the door rang as the front door opened. Luc glanced up and grinned and Jester followed his eyes to find a woman standing there who looked like she’d jumped from the pages of her sketchbook.

“Aunt Beau!”

The woman grinned and handed him a silver coin. “Hey, kiddo. Where’s your Momma?”

“In the back. But Aunt Jessie is here.” He turned to point at Jester standing near the counter and when the woman met Jester’s eyes, she froze.

The woman cleared her throat. “Well, I gotta head out, kid. Tell your Momma I said hi.” She turned back towards the door and pushed it open.

“Wait!” Jester exclaimed. She turned away and picked up her sketchbook, looking down at the drawing on the first page. She turned sharply and when she glanced up there was a woman standing in the doorway. “Oh! Hello. I didn’t hear you come in. The owner is in the back.” The longer Jester looked at her, the more she looked like the girl in her sketchbook.

The strange woman gave her a sad smile and continued out of the door. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll come back later.”

When the woman was gone, Luc turned around and frowned at her. “Are you and Aunt Beau fighting?”

“What? What do you mean?” She wasn’t sure when he had moved or when she’d picked up her book.

“Why are you being so weird? Can’t you just make up already?” He stomped into the backroom just as his mother stepped out. 

“Hey, here, I found a rag. Where are you going?” She sighed. “Ugh, I’ll never understand that kid.”

Jester looked down at her book and ran the tip of her finger over the curve of the girl’s cheek.

Jester agonized over the girl in her sketchbook for two weeks. She ripped one out, the one that she liked the least even though that wasn’t saying much since she liked them all quite a lot, and hung it on her window, hoping if she stared at it maybe something would make sense. It looked candid, like the girl didn’t know she was being drawn. She had a serious set to her face, staring out ahead of her like she was watching for something to appear, like she was protecting someone. There were a lot of candid drawings of her, some where she was sleeping, some where she was talking to someone that Jester didn’t draw, some like this one where she was just looking out on the world with different expressions. Then there were some that she obviously posed for and Jester liked those best sometimes. These were often silly, her making ridiculous poses with a faux serious expression, and sometimes they were cute, her making a funny face while her body was relaxed and languid. 

Jester had put so much love into these drawings, she didn’t believe that she would just forget someone like this. 

One afternoon she took her sketchbook and just went walking through the city streets, trying to find the girl with the cute, lopsided grin and the wild, passionate eyes that Jester had worked so hard to document. About two hours in, she came to Caleb’s neighborhood and decided to stop by, see if he knew anything about the sketchbook girl.

She knocked on the door of his little townhouse and waited until the door was cracked open by Willie in a little tux. She grinned and crouched down to be level with his face. “Hello Willie! Is Caleb in right now?”

Willie hesitated in the doorway for a moment, then he must have received an order because he stepped out of the way and held the door open for her. Jester grinned and skipped inside. 

“In here, Jester!” called Caleb’s voice from the library at the end of the hall. Willie shut the door behind her as she moved through the home. She stepped through the open library door and found Caleb carefully marking the page in his book and sitting it aside, then he smiled softly up at her. “Jester. It is good to see you, it has been too long.”

Jester grinned and threw her arms around him, squeezing him lovingly. “Oh, Caleb, I have so much to talk about! There’s a mystery going on and I’m getting to the bottom of it and I really need your help, okay?”

Caleb gently pat her shoulders in an approximation of a hug until she pulled away. “Of course, I would be glad to help. What mystery is this?”

Jester pulled out her sketchbook and flipped to her favorite drawing of the forgotten girl. She was clearly entranced in the book she was reading, her eyes narrowed and serious but her posture relaxed and settled in for a long haul. She looked so soft and warm that Jester could almost imagine curling up against her side and just cuddling her for hours as she read. “Do you know this person?”

Caleb frowned. He looked the drawing over closely, tilting his head as he seemed to consider what he was seeing carefully. “I… I do not. But…” He paused and hurried over to his desk, pulling something out of the top drawer. 

Jester gasped when she recognized the object in his hand and looked between it and the sketch. “The circlet! You have her circlet!”

Caleb nodded and handed it over so that Jester could hold it up against her drawing to compare. “I remember that we found it within the Happy Fun Ball but I do not remember where it went after that. Then I found it in a rucksack I have in storage and I had intended to sell it but… I don't really know, I felt… attached to it. Emotionally. It was completely nonsensical, I barely remember this, but I felt like I needed to… have it. It must have belonged to that woman in your drawing. But why can I not remember her?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out for weeks! I think she used to come by the market every morning but she doesn’t anymore, I don’t think I’ve seen her in days. Luc remembers her though and he keeps asking when we’re going to make up. I just don’t understand.” She handed the circlet back to Caleb and he took it gingerly, like there was a different weight to it than there had been before. “We both clearly really, really loved her, why is she gone? You said you had a rucksack with random stuff in it?”

“Some clothes, blue monks garments that I assumed we pulled off an enemy at some point. Some lightning gloves that I have intended to use to copy the enchantment onto something I could use more easily. But… I suppose all this time it was hers, it was her things that she left with me.” He took a deep breath in through his nose and held it for a moment with a contemplative look on his face, then he released it in a sigh. “Jester… we must figure this out.”

Jester bit her lip nervously. “I have… a theory but it might be totally stupid. Do you… Do you remember how we changed Veth back?”

“Of course. In your mother’s bathtub.”

“Yeah, but before that. We found out that she was cursed and to remove the curse we needed to make a deal with the hag? Do you remember what we traded?”

“I…” His eyebrows furrowed as he thought. “No. I don’t. You think we traded her ?”

“No, no, no, no, I don’t think we’d ever ever do that, but maybe… maybe she traded herself? Right after going to see the hag, that’s when all the sketches of her in my book stop. I have one of her from two days before we went to the swamp-” She flipped to it now, a sketch of the girl curled up in their old cart with her knees pulled up to hide her face like she was crying and didn’t want anyone to see. “And then they just stop and she doesn’t show up again until I started people watching outside my window a few months ago. I don’t think we would have given her up or anything, that’s not what I’m saying, but whatever happened in that swamp is the reason she’s gone now, I just know it.”

“Do we have any way of finding her?”

Jester frowned and looked back at the sketch. “Well, what I’ve been doing all day and going through town trying to see if there’s anyone who looks like my sketches but that’s not really working so far. And if it did work and I found her and lost her again then I wouldn’t even remember it. There’s no way to find her if I keep forgetting that she exists every time I do. I think that I tried scrying on her a few days ago but I don’t remember what I saw. I remember saying ‘Hey I should scry on her and see if that works’ and then a few minutes later I remember sitting on my bed with less magic than before but I don’t even remember actually casting the spell at all.” Jester huffed and whined. “I just want to know why I loved her so much, you know? Like, I think that I really, really just loved her so much and now I can’t even remember her at all and when I think about it I just feel so… empty.”

Caleb reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, rubbing with his thumb comfortingly. “We will find her, Jester. I will look through my spell books this evening to see if I have anything that might help and you should try communing with the Traveler, see if he has any ideas. Then, in the morning, we will find her and figure this all out, I swear.”

Jester could feel tears burning in the corners of her eyes but she sniffled and nodded. “What if she’s very lonely, Caleb? What if she doesn’t have anybody anymore?”

Caleb just sighed sadly and pat her shoulder again and she left to head home, holding her sketchbook tightly to her chest.

After dinner she sat down at her elaborate Traveler Shrine in the corner of her bedroom, already with her hair in curlers and in her nightgown. She sat down in front of it and took a deep breath, sightlessly flipping through her sketchbook until she found a page with a dog-eared corner. 

“Oh, Traveler!” she called, holding her hands out in front of her. “If you’ve got some time, you know, if you’re not super busy, I have some questions that I was hoping you could help me with really quickly?”

She waited for a few heartbeats, then smiled and opened her eyes when she felt a hand on her shoulder. “My dearest Jester,” said his smooth, loving voice. “I will always make time for you.” She turned to him and grinned when she saw his telltale green cloak up over his head. He pulled it down and smiled at her playfully as his red hair spilled over his shoulders. “What can I do for you?”

Jester held up her book, showing him the sketch of the forgotten girl mid battle. She had a staff in her hand and a fiery in her eyes that made heat gather in Jester’s belly. “Do you know this person?”

The Traveler gave her a sad smile and brushed his fingers down her face. “Oh, my sweet Jester. I was wondering when you would come to me with this. There is nothing that I can do to sever the spell keeping you apart from her.”

“So you do know her? It’s all true, it’s all real?”

“Of course it is. The being that did this to her is… regrettably, more powerful than I at the moment. In a hundred years or so perhaps that would change but I suspect you do not wish to wait that long.”

Jester frowned down at her book and ran her finger along the girl’s two dimensional face. “So there’s nothing I can do.”

“I did not say that. There is nothing that I can do. But the power to free her from this has been within you all along. The magic prevents me from telling you so, but…” He paused and winked before pulling the hood back up over his head. “You’re a clever girl. You’ll figure it out, my dear.” Then he vanished like he had never been there at all.


	2. Chapter 2

“So he had no help to give at all?” Caleb asked as he and Jester gathered outside his town house the next morning. He was carefully buttoning up his coat to stave off the chill coming up from the ocean.

Jester huffed in annoyance and crossed her arms. “He said that the power to save her was within me already .”

Caleb frowned thoughtfully. “I found a few spells that I thought might help her in my books but if what he said is true then they will be just as useless against this.”

“I have a spell that should lead us to her. But after that I don't know what to do.”

Caleb nodded. “It is a start. Once we find her we can consider our other options.”

Jester nodded and cast the spell which created a path for her to follow through the streets of Nicodranus. They remained quiet most of the way, trusting the magic to lead them in the right direction, but eventually the silence got to be too much.

“Do you think that she loved us?”

Caleb hummed thoughtfully. “Considering that she has supposedly previously sought you out by going to the market, she still seems to remember us. I would posit that she still does love us. If your hypothesis is true and she traded herself to the hag for Veth’s freedom… I have no doubt that she cared for us all very deeply.”

Jester sighed. “You’d think the least we could do for someone who loved us so much is remember her.”

“We will,” Caleb said. Jester was surprised to note that there was no waver in his voice. He was positive that they would solve this.

The spell led them towards the edge of the city towards the warehousing district, passed all the fishing boats. It ended at the door of a small red house, slightly dilapidated and barely livable. 

“Is she living here?” Caleb mumbled, eyeing the boarded up window. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be possible for her to buy or rent if no one could remember her.”

Jester frowned. “It looks so… cold. I hope she’s not terribly lonely here.”

There was a noise behind them and when they turned they found Yasha standing several feet away, two paper bags in her hands and her eyes wide in shock. “Uhhh… Hi.”

Jester gasped. “Yasha!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I am… I’m dropping off food for… no one.”

Jester looked between Yasha and the seemingly empty house. “Do you remember her, do you know who she is?”

“I… Yes?”

“Where is she, who is she, tell us everything!”

Yasha blinked in surprise and gestured towards the house. “Could we… go in maybe?”

Jester marched up to the door and checked the door knob to see if it was locked but it opened easily like it hadn’t even been latched at all. She frowned but pushed the door open and Caleb and Yasha followed her inside, Yasha bending down slightly to keep from hitting her head on the door frame. She moved over to a table sitting in the corner by the window and sat the bags down on it before sighing and turning back to them.

“Her name is Beau.”

Jester tried to grab onto the name and it slipped through her fingers like water. “I… don’t remember what you just said.”

Yasha looked sad but nodded. “Yeah, only I remember her. After she made the deal with the hag there was this… ripple. It hit us all but I was able to withstand the effects I guess. There was this big scene after that. She stepped out of the hut and none of you knew who she was and you got all defensive and threatening and then she got defensive and threatening. Fjord almost stabbed her and I had to step between them. We didn’t know what had happened, only that whenever you turned away from her you forgot ever seeing her at all.” Yasha sighed and sat down in a chair that creaked under her weight. “We tried to figure it out, we tried to find a way… maybe to counteract it. But everytime one of you turned towards her… it was like meeting her for the very first time. And it just… It hurt her so much. And so she left. She vanished in the middle of the night without any of us knowing and when morning came none of you even realized she was gone.”

“But she came back,” Jester said. “I- I think I’ve seen her, there’s gaps…”

Yasha nodded and shifted awkwardly on her chair. “After we came back from the negotiations and Traveler Con and went our separate ways… I guess she found us. She never told me what she did when she was gone, I don’t think that I want… I think it’s better I don’t know. For a while she wanted to try again. She wanted to see if she could get someone to remember her. But nothing worked and eventually she gave up again.” She sighed and looked around the little house. “She lives here because she can’t get a job and no one remembers her long enough to report her for squatting.”

“Luc remembered her… at the shop, he called her… Auntie something, I don’t know.”

Yasha nodded. “Kids remember her for some reason.” She shrugged. “You know, I just bring her food when she gets a little low on money and I try to come see her every few days so that she doesn’t get lonely.”

“Where is she now?” Caleb asked, speaking up for the first time.

Yasha shrugged. “She… She’s become very secretive, very closed off. She does her own thing, trying to make money in any way that she can.”

“That’s so sad,” Jester mumbled. She tried to think of the woman’s name and all she got was a ‘B’ but the rest was gone already. “Will you tell us about her? What’s she like, what were we like?”

Yasha cleared her throat awkwardly. “Maybe you should just meet her? Then you can fix this and get your memories back?”

“But I won’t remember! I’ve noticed, okay- I’ve noticed that when people tell me about her I can remember, for a little while at least. I sorta remember what Luc told me but it’s going away, I remember what I’ve seen in my sketchbooks but I can’t even picture her face in real life.”

Yasha sighed. “She’s… smart,” she winced and hesitated. “I don’t really know how to do this in a way that does her any kind of justice. She’s really smart, she’s really fast, and she’s… she’s been through a lot.”

“Is she nice?”

“She… Kinda.” Yasha’s face was twisted up awkwardly. “She’s… specifically kind, if that makes sense.”

Jester nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that. Does she… Does she like me?”

That got a small smile out of her and Jester’s heart started to beat harder in anticipation. A smile was good, right? “Jester, she really, really loves you. And you loved her too. You were roommates for a long time. You were really close.”

Jester felt tears biting at the corners of her eyes. “Oh, I want to remember it all so badly!” She wanted to remember what it was like to be loved by the person smiling in her sketchbook. It must have been amazing. “How do I fix it? Everyone says that I can fix it, how do I fix it?”

Yasha shrugged. “I am not sure. Beau… I think she knows but she’d never ask you for it.”

Jester turned suddenly to Caleb who had been taking in everything with a calculating frown. “What do you think?” she asked. “What can I do to fix it?”

Caleb looked just as lost as she felt. “I… I do not know. I’ve never seen something like all this before. Maybe we need to go back to the hag but that would just require another sacrifice from one of us like she sacrificed herself for Veth. I fear this becoming some kind of endless sacrifice chain between all of us.”

Jester frowned. “What, you think I should just give up?”

“Of course not. But if we are unable to fix it… perhaps we should respect her wishes rather than put ourselves in danger trying to save her.”

The door behind them opened with an ominous creak and they all turned to look at it as it clattered against the wall. The woman in the doorway was frozen with the noon sun casting a shadow over her face from behind. She stared at Jester then her eyes flashed to Caleb and then to Yasha and then back to Jester like she expected them all to vanish.

Yasha broke the silence first, moving slowly up to her feet. “Beau… They found-”

Beau cut her off by shaking her head. She didn’t speak for a moment, then finally she licked her bottom lip and cleared her throat. “It’s fine. It’s fine. In a week they won’t even remember finding this place, I’ll just go sleep somewhere else for a while.” She walked over to a pile of fabric in the corner and started rolling up her bed roll and Jester and Caleb were very careful to keep their eyes on her.

“You’re Beau?” Jester asked, suddenly the name hung on her tongue like honey instead of slipping away like before. Was it because she was looking at her? “You were coming by the Chateau, you were at Veth’s shop…”

“Yeah, I-” She sighed. “I haven’t been going lately, I was clearly fucking bothering everybody so I was just gonna fuck off. You shouldn’t have come after me. Just go home and forget about me, it’ll save you a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to forget!”

“Well, I do. I haven’t saved up as much as I’d hoped but I guess it’s just time for me to go. I can’t keep fucking hanging around you guys like a ghost, it’s time to move on.” She hooked her bed roll onto the rucksack and stood up, throwing it over her shoulder.

Jester hurried backwards towards the door and threw herself in front of it to block the exit. “No! You don’t get to leave until I get answers.”

The look Beau gave her was reluctantly amused. She just raised an eyebrow and pointed at the gaping hole in the wall right next to her as if to point out that there was more than escape.

“Beau,” Yasha said, standing up and walking towards her. “You’re leaving?”

“Look, Yash, thanks for all your help but I just… I just think it’s better for everyone if I move on.”

“I will go with you then,” she said, leaving no room argument.

“No!” Jester yelled. “No one is leaving! I have so many questions and there’s this empty place inside of me that I think is supposed to be for you and I don’t want to live with it for the rest of my life!”

Beau just stared at her for a moment then dropped her bag to the ground and walked over to stand in front of her. She gave her a small, sad smile and reached out towards her. She hesitated, then put her hands on Jester’s arms. “Jes, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I put you through this because I was fucking selfish and I wanted to see you, that wasn’t fair. But you’ll forget about me, I promise. In fact, I guarantee it, just turn around in a circle and it’ll be over with.”

Jester reached up and grabbed her wrists when it seemed like she was about to pull away. “I won’t though, not really. Even before I realized you were coming to see me I knew that you were missing. Things would happen and I would be so excited to tell someone but I didn’t know who I was waiting to tell and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night expecting to hear somebody snoring somewhere else in the room but it’s silent and I can’t get back to sleep because it’s too quiet.” She shook her head trying to push away the tears burning in her eyes. “Even when I don’t know you exist I can feel you missing.”

Beau shook her head. “Jes-”

“You can’t leave. I’ll figure something out, I will, but you can’t just leave. Not yet.”

“Yasha said you know how to fix this?” Caleb asked, speaking up for the first time since Beau had arrived. “She said you wouldn’t ask for it, but you know what it is?”

Beau sighed and looked over her shoulder to look at him but couldn’t turn around all the way because of Jester’s vice grip on her wrists. “Yeah, I think so. I’ve never tried it obviously but, you know, theoretically it should work.”

“What is it?” Beau looked away and Caleb continued before she could refuse to tell them. “If you are planning on leaving, then what is the harm? We will forget what you’ve told us and you can move on.”

Beau licked her lips again and Jester followed the movement with her eyes. Beau swallowed audibly and then cleared her throat. “I have to… I have to die. And come back. I have to be revived with a True Resurrection.”

Caleb frowned. “Veth-”

“Yeah, it was Veth’s idea. She thought that that was the only way she could come back in her real body too. And she was right. If we hadn’t made a deal with the hag then it was her only other option. I went to the Cobalt Reserve in Zadash and I did so, so much fucking research for months after leaving you guys. Dairon was able to resist the spell the same way Yasha had so as long as I was with them I was allowed into the library. I did nothing but read about fucking fey day in and day out and there are three options to end a hag’s curse based on my research. Either get the hag to drop it herself which is clearly a fucking mess, track down a more powerful fey to counteract it which seems dangerous, or, you know, die.”

“And it has to be a True Resurrection?” Caleb asked, the wheels in his head turning.

“Well, yeah. I can’t come back in the exact same body or the curse would follow me, the same way that Veth was still cursed after she died and came back. I need to die and my body, this body, it needs to be destroyed. And then I can be brought back in a new body with no curse.”

“Beau…” Yasha mumbled behind her but Beau pointedly avoided looking at her.

“That’s why I didn’t want to bring it up. I can’t ask any of you to kill me and destroy my dead body, that’s fucked up. And, besides, bringing me back would be nearly impossible because you won’t remember me, you won’t even remember that you need to cast the spell.”

“We could do it really quick,” Jester interjected. “How long after looking away does someone forget you? If we do it quickly enough maybe we can start the ritual before we forget?”

Beau crossed her arms. “Like, three seconds, I guess, but it’d be a hell of a gamble. And, besides, there are so many potential problems with that. How are you going to kill me, destroy my fucking dead body, and cast the spell in three seconds? Also, I’m not about to ask you guys to do that, that’s so fucked up.”

“Then don’t ask. I want to do it.”

Beau gave her an unamused raised eyebrow. “You want to kill me?”

Jester squeezed Beau’s wrists in her hands. “I want to remember you.”

Beau finally looked up to meet her eyes again and Jester could have sworn she saw hope in them. “It’ll be difficult. I left all my money with you guys when I left and I’ve been making jewelry to sell and it’s not super lucrative. I don’t have enough to pay for the diamonds.”

“I have more than enough,” Caleb offered. “And, as for disposing of your body, I have a spell that will kill and destroy you in a single second.”

Beau’s face twisted. “You’re gonna disintegrate me? That’s cold, man. Besides, don’t I have to be kinda beat up for it to destroy me completely?”

He shrugged. “You can find someone willing to beat you up, I assume.”

Beau rolled her eyes. “Cold,” she said again. “I forgot what it’s like when you don’t love me, you’re fucking ice cold.”

“Do you want to be free of this curse or not?”

Beau opened her mouth to retort and then shook her head. “No. I’m not going to let you kill me, Caleb. I know your history, when you remember that we’re family it will fuck you up.”

Caleb was still as death and he watched Beau with an unreadable expression. “This is different,” he said, revealing little in his voice. “I will be killing someone I don’t know and don’t care about and bringing back someone I love. This is… This is very different.”

Beau hesitated still but Jester grinned and moved her hands up to intertwine her fingers with Beau’s. “Please,” she whispered.

Beau bit her lip and then finally nodded. “Okay. Okay, yeah.”

Jester blinked in surprise when she found herself standing in front of the Chateau. The last thing she remembered was talking to Caleb and Yasha in the abandoned house that… that someone lived in. How had she gotten home? Had the forgettable woman walked her here? She looked around frantically but there was no one unusual on the road with her right now.

She frowned and almost started casting Sending to Caleb, but paused when she found a piece of paper in her hand. She uncurled her fingers and found a scrap of paper from her sketchbook sitting in her palm.

_ Tomorrow morning, 5 am, at the broken house. Jester, you wrote this, just come. _

It was her own handwriting, she was the only person who dotted her ‘i’s with poop swirls. She flipped the paper over.

_ Oh! And be sure to prepare True Resurrection when you wake up, it’s super important! _

True Resurrection?

Who was she bringing back? 

She frowned and turned the paper around in her fingers, trying to find some kind of hint that this note was coerced out of her or something but there was none. She hummed thoughtfully then started drawing in the air with her fingers.

“Caleb?” she said aloud. “I’m at my home and I don’t remember how I got here. Are you alright? I found a note and I don’t know-” She cut herself off when she felt the magic end and pouted but waited for Caleb to respond.

“I am on my way home now with our sketchbook friend. The note is real, it is important. Please follow the instructions.”

Jester sighed and looked down at the note again before shoving it into her dress pocket and walking inside.

When she woke up she found the note taped to her horn where she’d left it so that she wouldn’t forget. She got dressed and left the Chateau before her mother woke up, not in the mood to lie to her mother about where she was going. It’s not like she could tell her the truth, she didn’t even know what the truth was. 

As she got near the broken house she’d found with Caleb, she hesitated, biting her lip nervously. This felt like a trap.

“Jester!” Caleb said, stepping up behind her. “Why are you here?”

Jester frowned at him and held up her note. “I wrote myself a note to come here. I talked to you last night after I got home, you were with the sketchbook girl. Did you forget?”

He looked down at the note in his own left hand and then at the burlap sack in his right. “I had a note as well. It said to bring this bag of diamonds with me. I’m not sure where they came from but I suspect that if I check my vault when I get home I will find it fairly empty. It also said to prepare Disintegrate.”

Jester gasped. “Mine told me to prepare True Resurrection! Are we… what did we agree to?”

There were footsteps approaching from behind and Caleb looked back. He relaxed when he saw Yasha approach. She nodded and gave them both a calm smile. “Are you both ready? Did you bring what you needed?”

“Yasha, what are we doing here?” Jester asked. 

Yasha hesitated, then gestured towards the house. “We’re helping a friend. I know you don’t remember but I promise you are not in danger.” She started towards the door and then paused to glance back at them. “Will you trust me?”

Jester chewed on her bottom lip and then nodded, hurrying to follow. Caleb hesitated for another moment, then cast Mage Armor on himself before following as well. The house was dark as they stepped inside and Caleb cast some lights to brighten the place. There was a bed across the room with a woman laying on it, her dark skin covered in bruises and dried blood as she watched them carefully.

She gave them a humorless grin. “Sup?” she grunted, clearly in pain. 

Jester gasped and hurried over. “Oh, no! What happened? Yasha, is this why we’re here? To heal her?”

The woman groaned and forced herself to sit up. “Nope. Exact opposite actually. My name is Beau.”

“You’re the sketchbook girl,” Jester mumbled, kneeling by Beau’s beside and gently brushing away a strand of her that was stuck to her face by dried blood. “What happened to you?”

“Fight club. If I was at full health it would have been harder for you to… to kill me.”

Caleb frowned and hung back by the open front door. “That is what the Disintegrate is for.”

Beau nodded. “Yeah.”

Yasha cleared her throat. “I know that you both don’t remember, but Beau is cursed.”

Beau snorted. “Yeah, that’s  _ why _ you don’t remember.”

“Like Veth,” Caleb said. “You were right, Jester, this is to do with the hag.”

“Long, terrible story short… I need you to Disintegrate me and cast True Resurrection within three seconds.”

Jester frowned and twisted her fingers nervously. “Three seconds? Why three seconds?”

“Because after that you’ll forget my name and it won’t work.”

Jester stood up and started backing away from the bed. “I… I don’t know. This is so strange and I don’t understand.”

Beau smiled at her like there wasn’t an ounce of happiness in her whole body and it made Jester’s heart feel tight in her chest. “That’s alright, Jes. I won’t make you do it.” She groaned in pain as she forced herself up to her feet and she limped as she tried to catch her own weight.

“No, no, I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Sit down, you’re making my body hurt just looking at you.”

Beau laughed and let herself fall back on the bed, then she winced from the fall. “So…? What’s the verdict? You in?”

Jester nodded and she saw Caleb cross his arms in the corner of her eye. “Yasha, I trust you,” he said. “If you tell me this is a good thing…”

“If it works,” Yasha started, smiling slightly. “It will be a great thing.”

“If it does not work?”

Beau shrugged. “Then I’m dead and you won’t even remember, so you know, win-win.” 

Jester walked over to Beau and gently took Beau’s hand in her own. “And when this works, I’ll remember you?”

Beau smiled softly even though Jester was brushing over her raw, bloody knuckles.. “Gods, I hope so. I’ve missed you so much, Jester.”

Jester smiled back and then slowly released her hand and stepped backwards. “I’m ready. I need an hour,” Jester said. “I need an hour to get the spell ready.” She sat down on the ground and started drawing divine symbols in the dust on the floor. “Just give me an hour.”

Caleb stepped further into the house, watching Beau carefully to which she responded with a sarcastically raised eyebrow and teasing smirk. “Sup,” she said. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“I have many things on my mind.”

She rolled her eyes and pat the bed beside her. “Well, might as well sit down, man. We’re not going anywhere for an hour.”

He didn’t move. “At which point I will kill you.”

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“You do not seem bothered. What if something goes wrong?”

“You won’t remem-”

“No, that’s not-” He sighed in annoyance. “That’s not what I mean. How do you feel now, with the knowledge that it might not work?”

“I trust Jes to bring me back.”

“But you know that it is not a sure thing?” She just shrugged and didn’t respond and he finally took the seat at her side that she’d offered him. He looked over at Yasha who was watching them carefully the way someone watched a barrel of TNT. It probably wouldn’t blow up but there was always a chance that a stray spark would light it aflame. “I have your things at my house. Some clothes and a pair of lightning gloves.”

Beau snorted. “Yeah, you guys tried to disarm me before you would let me sleep at your camp. But you couldn’t disarm me of these.” She held up her bruised and beaten arms and flexed comically. “I couldn’t get my bag back before I left, you wouldn’t let me inside the dome.”

“Ah, I see. I’m… sorry? I will return it all to you when this is over.”

“No big deal. I’m surprised you didn’t sell it, honestly.”

“I thought about it but it… it did not feel right.”

Beau grinned and pressed her shoulder against his playfully. “Awww, you missed me. Fucking sap.”

Caleb huffed in annoyance and decided to change the subject before he said anything particularly vulnerable. “Where did you go? When you left us?”

“I told you, Zadash.”

“Nein, I know that one. Is that all? You just went straight there and then straight to Nicodranus?”

“I- Well, no. Not exactly. I went to see my family first.”

“You have a family?”

Beau sneered then winced when it pulled on her busted lip. “Sorta. I have parents, not that they’d claim me even if they did remember me. I wasn’t worried about them. I’ve got a little brother, TJ. I just wanted to make sure the hag didn’t do anything to fuck with him. He… He remembered me. Kids just do, I think she did it on purpose but I don’t know why. My parents didn’t remember me, obviously. They tried to have me arrested. Again.”

“They sound like they suck.”

Beau laughed out loud. “Yeah, they really do. It was fine though. I had you guys, I didn’t need that family when I could make my own.”

“And then you had no one.”

“I had Yasha. But… yeah. It got pretty lonely. So, I guess, to answer your question from earlier about how I feel knowing it might not work? I feel like any alternative is better than this.”

Caleb let the conversation end there and got back up to pace around the room, keeping an eye on Beau so that he did not forget her before the big moment. She groaned in pain and laid back on the bed, gently running her fingers over her more serious injuries.

The sun started to fill the room through the cracks in the walls as the hour passed slowly.

“Ten seconds,” Jester said suddenly, shattering the silence that had fallen over the room in the hour since she’d started working. “Get ready.”

Beau pushed herself back to her feet, wobbling a little but able to hold herself up. She kicked off her shoes and started stripping out of her clothes. “They’re gonna disintegrate with me,” she answered before anyone could ask. “And I like these clothes.” She piled them up carelessly on the floor and then pushed the blanket and pillow off the bed. “Lay the diamonds out here. You’ll need to time this perfectly. Start your spell and then hold it for the right moment.”

“Ja, on it.” Caleb walked over to the bed and dumped his bag of diamonds out on top of the hay mattress, spreading them out into a single layer. 

Yasha walked over to her and squeezed her shoulder before stepping away.

Beau nodded at her and then looked at Caleb. “We all ready?” Caleb just nodded in response. “Alright. I’ll see you all on the other side.”

Caleb had a lodestone held tight in his fingers and with his other hand he sprinkled dust in the air in front of him, but held the spell until Jester finished drawing her divine symbols in the dust. When Jester’s hands paused and held her spell, he released his own.

The magic surged off of his fingers and hit Beau in the chest like a cannonball, throwing her off her feet. Jester saw it like slow motion, Beau flying through the air and then turning to ash from her head down to her feet and disappearing in the shadows under the boarded up window.

Yasha looked away.

Jester took a deep breath and released her spell into the universe to ask for the soul of her sketchbook girl to come home.

A name…

She needed a name…

The spell needed her call out the name and it was hanging on the very tip of her tongue but it kept slipping away. 

There was a ‘B’... maybe?

She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands into fists. “Beau.” The name left her lips like a sigh or a kiss and the diamonds on the bed shattered. They hung in the air for a moment before they began to coalesce into the shape of a human woman laying flat.

“Jester,” Caleb mumbled, watching the bed with narrowed eyes.

Jester frowned and glanced at Caleb and Yasha. “Wha-What’s going on?” She didn’t remember anything after stepping through the front door. They were here to help someone, she thought. Had they succeeded? She pushed herself up to her feet and stepped out of the circle of divine symbols on the floor. “Caleb? Yasha? Who-”

There was a sound like an ear popping from pressure and she winced in surprise. When she opened her eyes again, she didn’t see the room in front of her. She saw a wave of memories crashing before her eyes.

The first time she saw Beau, standing with her back to her and Fjord as they approached, but then turning and smirking at them. “Oh hey. Sup.”

Then their first night sharing a room, seeing Beau undress and counting the scars on her dark brown skin. She asked about them and Beau had laughed and said “It comes with being a badass” but Jester had seen the sadness in her face.

She remembered holding Beau’s nearly lifeless body in her arms and seeing her disappear into the back room with Reani and she remembered braiding the circlet into her hair and running her fingers over her scalp and she remembered Beau holding her tightly while she cried. 

She remembered watching Beau step into the hags hut with no idea that it would be the last time she remembered her for almost a year. She remembered the sad smiles that Beau gave her every time they locked eyes in the city. She remembered the sight of Beau disappearing in a puff of dust like she had never existed at all.

Her heart hammered against her chest and she laid her hands over it as if that would calm it down. It didn’t work.

One moment the bed was empty with diamond shards dancing in the air above it like a million tiny ballerinas and in the next Jester blinked and Beau was laying on the bed.

Jester held her breath, running her eyes over Beau’s still, lifeless body. Her injuries had healed, the dried blood was gone, even a few of her older scars had gone too. Jester had a feeling that she’d be disappointed about that.

Only when Beau’s back arched up off the bed and she sucked in a heavy, filling breath did Jester allow herself to breathe again. Jester rushed over to her side as Beau lowered, still unconscious, back onto the mattress and climbed into the bed at her side, pulling her close and holding Beau against her chest.

“Beau,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut to hold in the tears biting at the corners. She felt Caleb’s calloused hands touch her shoulders and felt Yasha’s heavy presence nearby. “I’m here, I’m sorry, I’m here.” Beau didn’t respond but when Jester opened her eyes she could have sworn that Beau was smiling in her sleep.


End file.
